On the Run in Occupied Poland: Tales of a Refugee Childhood

Fleeing Soviet-occupied Vilnius in 1940, a girl and her parents arrive in German-occupied Poland. This child's-eye account brings wartime and refugee experiences vividly to life. On the Run in Occupied Poland presents the daily wartime experiences of a Polish-Catholic girl. Written as an adult by Grażyna Gross, née Połtowicz (1931-2022), this collection of vignettes communicates uncannily the perspective of the child Gross was at the time, while also conveying her adult thoughts on the strategies human beings deploy to stay alive as refugees in times of war. This unusual contribution to the history of Occupied Poland highlights the fates of dispossessed Polish families as a result of both the Russian Revolution and the division of Poland in World War II. Providing concrete details of lived experience during these monumental events, this "paramemoir" constitutes a type of life-writing that goes beyond a single individual. It is a life story with enhancements in the form of factual footnotes, rare photographic evidence, a map, and contextualizing commentary in the form of essays by Joyce Gross, the author's daughter, Irene Kacandes, a professor and friend, and Aleksandra Szczepan, a scholar educated in Kraków, the city in which Gross spent the longest period of the war. A compelling source for further research into how the occupation of Poland from both East and West affected non-Jewish Poles, this book will be treasured by historians as well as ordinary readers for its surprising insights into a difficult refugee childhood that overshadowed a whole life.